Discrimination Against Native American Indian - 1588 Words

Throughout history there have been many minority cultures. Americans first minority group was that of the Native American Indian. The claim made in 1492 by Columbus of being the first to discover America, was the first discrimination against the Native American Indian. How can one claim to discover a body of land when there are already inhabitants on that land? This was just the beginning of the discrimination against Native Americans and this discrimination continues to this day. When European settlers arrived in America they brought with them disease, such as small pox, measles, and typhus. The effects on the Native American Indian was devastating. It is estimated that up to 90% of the Native American population died during the†¦show more content†¦Treaty violations between the Native American people and European white settlers’ government became a constant way of life for the Native American Indian. During the 19th Century they had been deprived of much of t heir land by forced removal, by a succession of treaties (which were often not honored) and by military defeat by the USA as it expanded its control over the American West. (Boxer, 2009) Expulsion is an extreme consequence of being a minority group. Essentially the US government drove the Native American people out of their tribal land and forced them to live in uninhabitable locations. This resulted in the decline of many, which might be considered a form of extermination. (McNamara, 2008) In 1934 the United States officially recognized the failure of assimilation policies and began to reverse them. In 1935, Congress granted Native people the right to press land claims and treaty violations in the U. S. Court of Appeals. The heritage of dispossession is not over, it is not past history. Rather dispossession continues to set the terms today for Native people’s struggles for physical and cultural survival. Many Native Indians still speak their original tongue as their f irst language, many have lost that ability. In a study in 1990 census data found that 70% of Navajo children in Arizona between the ages of 5-17 spoke Navajo language at home. Among Lakota Sioux children, the